


immovable object meet unstoppable force

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, F/M, Film Noir tropes, Gangsters, Jane Crocker Private Eye, Kissing, Smoking, red lipstick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 12:53:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17345585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Jane Crocker has a job to do, and no one is going to get in her way.Not even an unfairly dapper Carapacian gentleman who's far to the wrong side of the law.





	immovable object meet unstoppable force

One of these nights. Just. One of these nights, you're going to give up this whole game. Settle down, like your Dad wants you to, run a business. A bakery maybe, or a joke shop. Find a husband (or a wife), and raise a mess of kids. Be happy and be the nice comfortable hausfrau slash entrepreneurial business owner you know your Dad wishes you could be. With a lot lower risk of being shot at.

But then you wouldn't be doing this, and it makes you feel _alive_.

You're on the heels of the Midnight Crew, you've tracked them all the way down to one of their hidden little dens where they spend time scheming and drinking, smoking. You can't look too down at them for the last two; your father taught you how to enjoy a nice pipe of tobacco but you pretend like you don't enjoy a tumblerful of good scotch when you're in decent company. You keep a bottle of the cheap stuff in your desk for the nights when the memories of cases you've failed, mistakes you've made are too real. Sometimes Roxy comes in and tidies you up, puts you to bed on the couch in your office and stuffs Lil Seb from your filing cabinet drawer under your arm, as you dream in slats of golden light falling through your window. It's good for the bad days.

You catch a flash of a black coat ahead of you, and you can feel the burn and rush of running through the dark alleyways catching up to you. But you keep chasing; you want answers and Droog can give them to you. It's not even really about him and his gang this time. He can keep whatever secrets that nasty little roustabout Slick wants him to keep, as long as he tells you what you want to know about Lord English. Or even the Batterwitch, if you're lucky.

Grabbing hold of the shaking fire escape, you haul yourself up after him and curse the solid nature of your body as his taller form disappears ahead of you. Iron cuts into your palms, rust leaving smears, and you dig your teeth into your lip and feel yourself clamp down on your determination and you keep going. It's what you do best. When he jumps, you trust to faith and jump after him, one hand on your hat to keep it on your mess of dark curls. Thankful as always that you don't wear skirts when you're working, the pleated slacks giving you room to move. It's a man's world in so many ways, and you could tally them up for exposition if you were so inclined. 

It's almost an anticlimax when you corner him in an alley, fog drifting around just enough to give you both a little cover. The wan light of a street lamp barely enough to give you anything more than the highlights on his chitin, black and impenetrable as always. You narrow your eyes, and wish you were ill-bred enough to spit on the sidewalk so you could clear your mouth of the sticky feeling as you try not to seem like you're panting or overwrought in any way. Most of the game is in how you present, and you're not going to let Droog get a leg up on you.

"Droog."

"Crocker."

Taking a step forward, you almost wish you smoked cigarettes for a moment. It'd give you something to do with your hands. He takes care of the fleeting thought for you, lighting a cigarette from the one he lights for himself and handing it to you. Out of principle, you should refuse, but you don't. Taking the hand rolled cigarette, you lift it to your mouth and inhale, before pulling it away. Yours now has bright red lipstick marking the white papers; his is quite clean.

"Just a few questions tonight, Droog," you say cheerfully in a very spritely tone of voice made out of pure spite, and you can tell he hates it. As always. He would prefer things were done more sensibly, and calmly. Which is why you do it; you don't know why getting on his nerves is one of your favourite things but it is. With Slick, he's a massive raw exposed nerve of stabbing and obscenity, it's not the triumph it is with Diamonds Droog. So unflappable. So professional. So very dapper. You don't really have much to do with the other two, you keep out of range of Deuce's explosives and if you go toe to toe with Boxcar, it's for fisticuffs. Not much talking involved there. "A friendly conversation, if you know how to conduct one. A gentlemanly discussion."

"Wouldn't that require the both of us to be gentlemen?" he inquires, and you look back out the alleyway to see if you can spot his compatriots. If they come up behind you, well! You wouldn't say you couldn't get out of it, but it would be a pretty pickle. "You being something of a lady, and me being...well."

"All I want is some information. Right now? The Midnight Crew is not who I'm after," you say, and come up closer so the two of you can talk quietly. If anyone was looking for the two of you tonight, the last thing they're going to expect is for the two of you just to be talking and having a smoke. Like old friends. Or old enemies. You're pretty sure they just think you're a nuisance though. Jane Crocker, private eye. Runaway Heiress. A girl dressed up in slacks and suspenders, acting like a man of the world. Well, fuck them! You're good at this. And it suits you better than tiaras and silk gowns ever did. "I'd like to talk about Snowman."

The cherry of his cigarette flares in the dim light as he inhales, and you don't know what you're expecting. But it wasn't for him to laugh, a grating quiet noise like a dying man choking on his own mortality. You can feel yourself growing furious immediately, but you try to wrestle it down. Getting angry won't solve anything.

"Snowman?" He exhales smoke and shakes his head, the rim of his hat letting you just make out the glitter of his eyes. "Look, you're a brash dame, Crocker. I got some respect for you." He pauses, looking up for a moment, and you push down the surge of pride even harder than the anger. "But you're not hard enough to tangle with that livewire. Believe me. Take your little lost pet jobs, and your cheating hubbies, and be happy with that. _Don't_ come around asking me about Snowman again. Little girls shouldn't play with bombs, capische?"

"I'll ask you about what I want, and I'll do the work I want," you grit out, and grab him by the front of his vest and turn to slam him up into the wall, sending his cigarette flying. Yours is still clenched in the corner of your teeth, choking, drying. He's surprised. You're smaller than him, shorter, but you're deceptively strong and always have been. People have never expected you to have the right hook that you have; it's served you well in more than one situation. "Call me a little girl again, and I'll show you just how much I'm not, buster."

"That sounds like a threat, Crocker," he hisses, and smooths his hands down his shirtfront where you've crumpled it. You don't let go, so there's not a lot of smoothing and fixing he can do. It's going to crease, and you bet he's going to get changed into a freshly ironed one as soon as he can. God forbid he be seen as anything less than in perfect poise. "I'm not a man who deals kindly with the likes of that coming from the likes of you."

"A promise," you breathe out, and feel your lips twitch up into a grin. He reaches up and takes the cigarette from your mouth, all stained with your lipstick and puts it to the jagged line of his own mouth. Draws in a deep and obvious breath. Exhales smoke right into your face, getting smut on the lenses of your glasses. You don't move. You don't drop him.

"That right." A beat, where everything trembles on the possibility of whatever's going to come out of his mouth. "Little girl."

You snarl, and reach up to grab the collar of his shirt and yank him down to smear a hard kiss right across the hard plates of his face. Somewhere in the vicious kiss that's almost a fight, his hand finds the curve of your ass and your other hand reaches up to cradle the back of his head, knocking his hat off onto the ground. You don't actually know what came over you! But it felt so right, and terrible, as bad for you as a cheap cigar. Worst idea. But gadzooks, for a Carapacian, he sure knows how to blow the socks off a human girl in a kiss.

Licking your lips, you back off and admire the way scarlet lipstick is now painted over the smooth lines of his mouth like warpaint. You're not going to tell him it's there; you wonder what his buddies are going to say about it. You hope he doesn't find out before he meets up with them. And you really wish you could be there to see it.

"I'm not telling you shit about Snow," he tells you flatly, and bends down to pick up his hat. Throws the nearly finished cigarette down and grinds it out with the Cuban heel of his well-polished shoe. "You wanna commit suicide, you can find another guy to give you a gun to stuff in your mouth, Crocker."

"You old softie," you tease him and he snarls again, hand coming up for a moment like he's going to punch you, before he realises he has his hat in it. He jams it down on his smooth head and stuffs his hands in his pockets, before making a half-circle of avoidance around you to make his way back out onto the street. "You can tell me another time."

He raises a hand, and disappears into the fog while you look after him. When you think he's gone, you lean against the slimy brick and breathe out. Well. 

Wasn't that going to make interrogations more interesting in the future? You're kind of looking forward to it.


End file.
